Digital heritage is the use of digital media in the service of preserving cultural or natural heritage. The Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage of UNESCO defines digital heritage as embracing "cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources". The digitization of cultural heritage serves to enable the permanent access to art work ranging from literature to paintings. The main idea is the transformation of a material object into a virtual copy creating positive and negative implications. There has been several debates concerning the efficiency of the process of digitising heritage. Some of the drawbacks refer to the deterioration and technological obsolescence due to the lack of founding for archival materials and underdeveloped policies that would regulate such a process. Another main social debate, has taken place around the restricted accessibility due to the digital divide that exists around the world. Nevertheless, new technologies enable easy, instant and cross boarder access to the digitised work.
Virtual heritage
A particular branch of digital heritage, known as "virtual heritage", is formed by the use of information technology with the aim of recreating the experience of existing cultural heritage, as in virtual reality.
Digital heritage stewardship
Digital heritage stewardship is a form of digital curation which is modeled after collaborative curation. Digital heritage stewardship means stepping away from typical curatorial practices in favor of practices which allow its stakeholders the opportunity to contribute historical, political, and social context and culture. The collaborative practice encourages the creation, engagement, and maintenance of relationships with the relative communities from which certain information, material, and/or content originates. A notable use of digital heritage stewardship is for the preservation of Indigenous heritage. The Plateau Peoples' Web Portal is an online archive developed and collaborated on by representatives from six different tribes — the Colville, Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, Umatilla, Yakama, and Warm Springs — along with the team for Washington State University Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections to curate Plateau peoples' cultural materials.
